In April, NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino surprised a lot of league people by leaving to take a job with Fox Sports. Blandino’s role with the NFL was to eat shit whenever an official or an officiating crew screwed up. Now, he gets to serve as an in-game rules analyst alongside Mike Pereira.

NFL VP of officiating Dean Blandino said that he spoke with an official at the height of the personal foul battles between New York and Carolina, and told him that the league would support the ejection of Odell Beckham Jr., and possibly Josh Norman as well.

Down 13-10 with just under two minutes left against the Seahawks Monday night, Detroit quarterback Matthew Stafford dropped back from the Seattle 11 and found an open Calvin Johnson. As Johnson was tackled with the ball about to cross the plane of the end zone, Kam Chancellor popped it out of Megatron’s hand. The ball…

Remember, if you can, back a whole three days ago, before Marshawn Lynch conquered America: it's tough to believe now, but there used to be a big scandal about deflated footballs or something. (It's hard to recall the specifics.) The NFL is taking no chances on a repeat of the controversy. Nobody is getting to the…

Dean Blandino, the NFL's VP of officiating, made the media rounds today to discuss the controversial reversed pass-interference call that occurred in a crucial spot of Dallas's win over Detroit. Blandino didn't come down strongly on either side of whether Anthony Hitchens interfered with Brandon Pettigrew.

There's been a lot of talk and writing about the NFL's new emphasis on its officials calling a tighter game, especially their cracking down on passing defense. But we're through two full weeks of preseason games now, long enough to discard anecdotal evidence for hard numbers. And those numbers are stunning:

Earlier in the week, TMZ released a video of Jerry Jones's son Stephen partying with several people, including what appears to be Dean Blandino, the NFL's head of officiating. According to at least one person Jason La Canfora spoke to in the league, that is "definitely" him in the blue, skipping out of a Dallas…